Finder—Updated with a brushed-metal interface, a new live search engine, customizable Sidebar, secure deletion, File labels and Zip support built in. The Finder icon was also changed.

Fast User Switching—Allows a user to remain logged in while another user logs in

Exposé—Helps the user manage windows by showing them all as thumbnails.

TextEdit – TextEdit now is also compatible with Microsoft Word (.doc) documents.

Xcode developer tools—Faster compile times with gcc 3.3.

Preview—Increased speed with PDF rendering

QuickTime—Now supports the Pixlet high definition video codec

New applications in Panther

Font Book—Font Book, Apple's font manager, simplifies viewing character maps and installing fonts. It also allows the user to sort fonts into categories.

FileVault—On the fly encryption and decryption of a user’s home folder

iChat AV—The new version of iChat. Now with built-in Audio- and video-conferencing.

X11—X11 is built into Panther

Safari—New browser made to replace Internet Explorer for Mac, developed when the contract between Apple and Microsoft ended. Internet Explorer for Mac was still available but not supported by Microsoft or Apple. Safari 1.0 was included in an update in Jaguar but was used as the default browser in Panther.